Tea Party activists in Tennessee try to keep negative information about Founding Fathers out of textbooks

Tea Party activists in Tennessee say they want any portrayals of the Founding Fathers that might put them in a negative light to be taken out of textbooks.

The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

P.S. You people used to say, "What happened happened, and what didn't happen didn't happen." Which is it, or, as usual, do you hold mutually exclusive principles and pick the one that gives you the desired result in any given situation?

Eugh, that's insidious. That law, as stated, does not actually preclude one from mentioning any reprehensible things about the founders (presumably someone told them they'd never get away with that and they revised it a bit); as far as I can tell, it means you can't focus disproportionately on the bad to the exclusion of the good. Which sounds almost fair and reasonable until you realise its one-sidedness; rather than simply saying "you should present all aspects of the issue fairly," it says, by implication and omission, "you mustn't let what we deem bad overshadow the good; but you can completely ignore the bad and present only the good if you want." Such laws, in practical application, favour revisionists, since there will always be some teachers who will present an airbrushed "good" image of the founders to their students with no fear of chastisement, but anyone who is deemed to lean even slightly too far towards dealing with the bad aspects can be prosecuted.

Which they totally did. I mean seriously you can say that the founders were very progressive for the time but they are frankly insane lunatics by ours who kept slaves and murdered indians because they thought they were better than them and wanted their stuff.

"Tea Party activists in Tennessee say they want any portrayals of the Founding Fathers that might put them in a negative light to be taken out of textbooks."

Yeah. Let's just rewrite history because you don't happen to like what it says.

"The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”"

Fuck you. It's reality. Deal with it.

"Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”"

"Intruding" on the Indians? I realize you're a lawyer but I didn't think anyone would have the gall to call that simply "intruding" on them.

Aside from that, they did have slaves and, being human, they were hypocrites. Just because you don't like reality doesn't mean you can change it to suit you.

Huh? The founding fathers were no worse than other people at that time, some of them were probably better; nicer to their slaves than the norm, abstaining from hunting Native Americans. Show me a person who's not the least bit hypocritical about anything, and I'll show you a liar.

If you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat history, you stupid gits!!!